Jacqueline

I woke up this morning with another desperate urge to run away.

           Pale sunlight fluttered through the sheer curtains of my room. Gray. Even the bright paintings I hung on the wall last week look gray. Everything is becoming so dull.

           I stare at my blank ceiling and wrestle, like every morning, with the instinct to leave. I can always find something to tether me here. But not today.

           Jacqueline jumps onto the bed and blinks her strange, yellow eyes at me. She knows.

           “Hungry?” I ask. She only responds with a quiet meow.

           I pull myself from my covers and shake my hair from the back of my head.

Let’s just go, says the incessant wish in my mind.

I have to feed my cat, I respond.

I climb out of bed and to the kitchen, pinching the stalks of my aloe plant as I pass the counter. If only the landlord would let me paint the walls a different color. Anything other than white. I think I’d be much happier.

Jacq jumps onto the tiny dining table I have sandwiched between a bookshelf and the wall, grooming her long, dark fur as she waits for her meal. I grab a can of wet food and my sandwich leftovers from yesterday and join her.

“How would you like to go to Colorado?” I ask as she bites into her mush. She doesn’t like anything else. “I heard they have really nice hot springs. We can hike a mountain.”

A car honks outside. City traffic is loud and never ends. People always have something to honk about in the road, and always have somewhere to go. I take a chunk out of my sandwich and miserably eye my tiny apartment space.

That night, I can’t sleep again. All I can think of is leaving. I feel so trapped in such a fruitless existence: waking up, eating, working, eating, shopping, eating, going to sleep. I can’t anymore. I can’t live like this anymore. I see no point.

           By the time the sun starts peeking over my windowsill, I’m already packed. Clothes, snacks, toiletries, books – everything I might need. I feed Jacqueline and put her harness on. It still fits.

           “Come on,” I say, clicking the leash onto her harness. She sits down and blinks. She hates when I get like this. “Come on, we have to go. You’ll have fun, I promise.”

           I can tell by the wag of her tail she does not agree. But luckily, she’s just a cat, and I pick her up along with my suitcase and backpack of things. I’m finally leaving.

           “It’ll only be for a little while.”

I’m in Alabama. They have Noah’s ark there, if you can believe it. Not the real thing, of course, but what the Christians think it would have looked like. Massive. I try to imagine sitting on the bow and traveling a desolate, oceanic world, surrounded by every animal thinkable. It would be lovely. I don’t think I’d ever feel lonely.

           I have Jacq in one of those backpacks with the screen so that she can look through and breathe. It looks comfy, but she does not like all the new places.

           “Cheer up, Jacq,” I try telling her, opening her can of mush once we get to the car. “Think about how your ancestors might have been on that boat. Traveling. So you can get used to it, too, just for a little while.”

Nashville is gorgeous. So many stores, bustling with life. I journey into each of them, briefly looking at every item I can while Jacq sleeps in her backpack.

Two weeks on the road.

It felt so freeing, at first, but I find myself anxious to get to the next place as soon as I arrive to one. I want to see it all.

           At this point we’ve been to many of the southern states, passing through for about a day each. Jacqueline has refused to come out of the backpack in any of the loud areas, but sometimes I can convince her with a can of her food when it is not so busy. Still, her yellow eyes look tired when she crawls out of her carrier, stretching her thin, black legs.

           “Hang in there, okay? You’re lucky you’re a cat.” I frown. “You can be content with everything if you try.”

It’s been eight weeks.

           I’ve seen the caves in Kentucky, journeyed up trails in the Virginia mountains, saw Yosemite park and Washington’s monuments and every cactus there is to see in Arizona. Eating frivolously, buying souvenirs, staying in too many hotels – the money has long run out, but we’re still managing. I have a couple cans of cat food left, and even if my car ran out of gas the moment we hit the park at the base of some Colorado mountain, I still reassure Jacq: “We’re going home after this.”

           In a small backpack I throw in a bag of chips, a towel, and the remaining cans of cat food. I leash Jacqueline and we begin our journey up the mountain.

           The path is beautiful.

           Flowers and dark green grass cover the ground between the tall, shadowy trees. It’s a tough climb and there are lots of things to crawl over, but my pace only quickens. Jacqueline is having trouble keeping up.

           “Come on, we’re almost there!” I urge her on. I should have brought the backpack.

           She looks at me with dull yellow eyes and meows. And sits.

           Selfish.

           I pick her up and hold her the rest of the way.

We’ve reached the hot spring.

           It is a beautiful view. A bright pool of hot, steaming water overlooking a luscious sunset, and there seems to be nothing but trees. Trees and more mountains all the way to the horizon line. I strip my clothes and climb into the hot water, laughing.

           Jacqueline sits on the ledge next to the water and lays down, closing her eyes.

           I smile. “Are you tired? Here, do you want some food?”

           I open a can, but she does not look. I pet her black fur with a growing worry. Maybe I’ve been pushing her too much.

           “Okay, you rest – I’m going to swim around for a bit.”

           I spend the rest of the sunset diving below the hot surface and relaxing on the water’s edge, feeling the brisk, frosty air bite my eyelashes every time I emerge.

           Jacq is still lying on the ledge. She must be cold. I cover her with my shirt and hold the can to her face again, furrowing my brow. “Why aren’t you eating?”

           She blinks open her eyes, looking at me with contempt.

           We need to keep moving, says the voice in my mind.

           She won’t eat the food. She’s shaking.

           Why am I not content?

           I hold her on my lap when I get out of the water, wrapping us both in a blanket. Tears begin to well in my eyes.

           “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Jacq.”

           She rests her little head on my hand and gives a soft meow.

           Why can’t I be content?

           “I just… I just can’t help thinking, that maybe,” I pause, tears meeting my lipline, “that maybe, in another life, I’d be happy. That I’d be somewhere else. That I would not have lived the horrors that I’ve lived here, and that I wouldn’t feel so trapped being who I am. I don’t even know who I am.”

           Jacqueline begins to purr quietly beneath my sobs.

           I can’t live like this as much as I couldn’t live like how I was before.

           I am selfish.

           I have done nothing but hurt myself and my one tether to this life, Jacqueline.

           “We’re going back now, Jacq,” I cry, tears falling onto her sleek, warm fur, “We’re going back.”